Earlier, I wrote about some of our first impressions of the culture here in Seoul. Here are a couple more …

Seoul is a safe city. Seoul, with its population of 10.3 million people, is the 5th largest city in the world. Even so, it has a very low crime rate. AsainInfo.com says, “Seoul is known to be one of the safest places to travel in with its low crime rate.” Of course, while no place is completely safe, the U.S. Department of State also reports that Seoul has a low crime rate.

It looks like you don’t have to say, “Excuse me,” here. Every culture has its own social interaction rules. Yesterday, I held the door open for a young couple that was behind us (as I would normally do) and, gaging by the look on their faces, they didn’t know what to think.

But the most obvious thing we’ve noticed is that people bump into each other all the time and don’t say anything (BTW, Joleen discovered this in Manilla, Philippines nearly 20 years ago). We’re used to people saying, “Excuse me,” or “I’m sorry,” when they bump into people. Of course, because we don’t speak Korean, we really wouldn’t know what they said, but I don’t think they say anything. It’s simply part of the culture. It’s actually kind of cool — you can run into people anytime and not feel bad about it.

I now realize why a fight didn’t break out at the Incheon Airport in Seoul as we were heading out to find our bus to our drop-off point. A young woman, driving a luggage cart, bumped the foot of another young woman in front of her, who was also pushing a luggage cart. Ouch!

They hardly even flinched. The woman that I expected to be injured just looked down at her foot to see what happened, as she kept going forward. The woman who bumped the other woman, backed off a little, but neither of them said anything or even looked at each other.

Speaking of reckless driving, we could make an observation about the driving in Seoul, but I think reckless driving is pretty universal, especially in major cities.)

I’m sure we’ll continue to make other observations about the culture here. And in the coming days, we should be able to experience the culture of part of the Church here. We’re looking forward to that, and to what we will learn from them!

Today we ventured out a bit and visited the Korean Folk Village in Suwon. To get there, we had to catch a bus, which meant figuring out how Seoul’s bus transportation system works.

The trick was finding the right bus stop and getting on the right bus. The directions we found online stated …

From Exit No. 6 of Gangnam Subway Station [...] take City Express Bus No. [...] 5000-1 and get off at Korean Folk Village (30-40 minute ride).

No problem so far. However, we realized too late that we should have asked about return directions. We assumed it would be the same bus number and we would pick it up at the same place. Wrong! We attempted to get on one bus and the driver (who didn’t seem to speak English) pointed us across the street; fortunately, a passenger yelled out the bus number we needed.

We have found, ever since we arrived at the airport in Seoul, that people are very eager to help. Also, at two different times at the Folk Village today, elementary-school-aged girls waved to us and said, “Hello.” I think they were proud to use a bit of English.

Again, it was very cold today. I wouldn’t normally venture out in this kind of weather at home for four hours. But we did today, along with many Koreans. The village, which is mostly outdoors, consists of homes representing various economic classes from the past. There were a few museums, which helped us step inside and try to get warm along the way.

We were curious to see how The World Folklore Museum portrayed the USA and, not surprisingly, there were cowboys and Indians. Really just one cowboy and mostly American Indian artifacts. Also included was some information about the Eskimo.

We are safely back at our room and happy that the heater is pouring out warm air — it took a few hours last night until the air warmed.

We would have liked to have tried the food, but we chose not to eat at the Folk Village. People sat cross-legged, with their shoes off, on wooden platforms. That would have been okay inside, but not outside in below-freezing temperatures.

We opted for some rice candy, which is sorta like hard taffy (which we enjoyed), and another sweet rice snack that we haven’t tried yet. We may get a chance to experience Korean food tomorrow.

The Korean Folk Village was a very busy place today because of the Lunar New Year celebration. All in all, it was good to experience a bit of the Korean culture.